


Harlem Shake

by CharityLambkin



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Bruce Has Issues, DJ JARVIS, Drunk Tony, Gen, Pole Dancing, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 15:56:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharityLambkin/pseuds/CharityLambkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a rough month.  The Avengers are deep in their cups when JARVIS decides to get the party started, but Bruce isn't nearly drunk enough for this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harlem Shake

Harlem Shake

Tony was drunk.  His extreme inebriation was not so unusual to be noteworthy; neither was it out of place because just about every other Avenger was three sheets to the wind.  Well, Pepper wasn’t an Avenger, but she was definitely an honorary Avenger at least—at least to Bruce she was—and Bruce himself wasn’t drunk…not very drunk…not Tony-drunk.

Because, while everyone else was talking quietly and slowly passing out on the sofas, Tony was standing in the middle of the living room, wearing too-loose jeans, a black undershirt, and his Iron Man helmet, nodding his head in time with some music no one else could hear.  He had been wearing his gauntlets, too, but Steve forced him to take them off about half a bottle ago.  The helmet, however, was deemed to be safety measure since Tony seemed liable to fall down at any moment.  Bruce bit his lip hard to stifle a smirk as Tony tried to take a drink from the bottle with the helmet on.  The bottle clanked against the metal and the alcohol ran down the visor to pool on the stone floor.  Tony seemed surprised, then totally forgot about it a few seconds later and tried again.

Bruce was ready to call it a night, but he was loath to be the first to turn in and spoil the mood.  The Avengers were rarely all at the Tower at the same time anymore, and they had all had a difficult few months of missions—even Pepper, since Bruce was certain her endless meetings and phone calls were missions in themselves.  And he really thought that—as the team doctor, the oldest and the most sober—he was responsible for ensuring his teammates found their beds tonight.  Steve was older, he mused, but only measured in years and not experience, and Steve was as drunk as he could ever get on some noxious Asgardian potion Thor had found in the back of the fridge.  Thor was ecstatic that he had forgotten it on his last visit, but he didn’t want to drink alone.  Hence, he enlisted Steve as the least likely to die from the brew.  And Bruce was not that drunk, really.

Tony was getting going now, throwing his right hand back and forth in the air like he was scratching records on an invisible deck, though Bruce wondered why the deck was way up in the air. 

JARVIS, bless him and his twisted robotic soul, shifted seamlessly into an electronic track that made Tony’s head snap up.

“DJ JARVIS in the house! This is exactly the track I was thinking of!” Tony hooted, which made the other Avengers look up from their conversations as Tony jumped up on the couch and began grinding his hips in the air.

Pepper’s eyes lit up.  “Oh, I love this song!” She stumbled to her feet, tottering as she kicked her heels under the couch.  As if that were a hidden cue, JARVIS dimmed the lights and lowered a disco ball from the ceiling.  Because of course there would be a disco ball in the Avengers’ living room, Bruce mused.  Funny it hadn’t come up before.

The LED lights shifted from warm yellow to pale, clear blue as the chorus came in, “I’m bullet proof/ nothing to lose/ fire away, fire away…” Bruce’s entire being was interrupted as he saw Pepper gyrating amidst the lights, eyes half closed as her hands trailed subconsciously over the curve of her waist up and around her ribs.  Then, there was another pair of legs and hands everywhere as Natasha came up behind Pepper and fit close against her.  Rather than being scared (as Bruce would have been) or awkward (as, well, maybe no one present in the room _except_ him would be), Pepper giggled and leaned back into Natasha.  Bruce couldn’t tear his eyes away. Pepper was taller, but she seemed to melt into Natasha, who wrapped her arms around the slim blonde to pull her in closer.

“Just like Ibiza, baby!” Tony said in Iron Man’s electronic voice, still jumping up and down and shaking his ass on the couch.

This, Bruce thought, might be one of the greatest events he has ever witnessed.  He had to share this with Steve—he had to watch two beautiful women dance in Tony Stark’s living room--with Captain Fucking America.

So, he pushed himself away from the bar where he was sitting away from everyone else, and landed more or less on the couch where Steve was sitting with Thor.  But Steve wasn’t sitting so much as passed out against Thor’s broad shoulder.

“Is he OK?” Bruce asked, a little alarmed.

Thor smirked.  “He is feeling no pain, I assure you, but I think that our Captain has never been much of a drinker.”

“Do you see that?” Bruce pointed towards the impromptu dance floor where Tony was now trying to unsuccessfully weasel his way between the two ladies.

“Indeed, I do.  Is this a Midgardian custom?”

“Yeah, getting drunk and forgetting you can’t dance?  That’s pretty customary.”

Thor looked thoughtful.  “I have never considered myself the best dancer, but I do not think I have ever been drunk enough to forget that.”

“How about drunk enough not to care?”

“Ah, yes! That I have.  In fact, I believe that I may be there now.”

Thor carefully shifted Steve so he was lying on the couch and wormed his way (very successfully) between Pepper and Natasha.

Bruce looked down at Steve.  His mouth was hanging open, allowing a rivulet of drool to collect on the arm of the couch.  After a second, he began to snore.

But then the music blared louder, the bass reverberating in Bruce’s bones. The ceiling over the bar began to shift and open up, and a silver pole descended to lock into the bar.

“Tony!” Pepper shrieked, though it came out too slurred to be effective.  “You told me that you wouldn’t put that in!”

Tony stopped dancing abruptly and stared down at Pepper.  He flipped the visor up.  “Really, Pepper, after all these years it’s like you don’t even _know_ me!”

The exchange was circumvented by an alcohol-soaked Clint tumbling down from a vent in the corner of the room.  Several empty cans fell with him to clatter on the floor.  “Is that a stripper pole?” he said as he stumbled to his feet.  “We had these at the circus!”

The rest of the room stood agape as Clint swung himself upside down on the pole, grasping it between his thighs so he could let go with his hands.  He winked at Natasha as he took the pole in his hands again and held his body parallel to the ground.

“Oh my God that is obscene,” Pepper muttered.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Natasha said, stalking over to the bar.

Natasha and Clint took turns trying to outdo each other on the pole, which resulted in an impressive display of increasingly naked acrobatics (for traction, Clint assured everyone).  Even Pepper, poor Pep, had been convinced to take a swing, though she didn’t do too badly.  She fell, at the end, though it was right into Thor’s arms so Bruce wasn’t sure if it was an accident.

Not much more time passed before Bruce was ready to slink off to bed—damn responsibility; he refused to be responsible for this mess anymore.  But maybe, he thought, he should get Cap to his room before he woke up to the sight of Club Avengers. 

Then, Tony was in front of him.  He ditched the helmet sometime earlier but still had a hold of the near-empty bottle of scotch.  “Brucie, why aren’t you dancing?”

“I can’t dance, Tony.”

Tony made an exaggerated look around the room and leaned in. “Have you seen the big Norse god in the corner?” he said conspiratorially.  Thor was jumping and thrashing around Pepper, though he had to possess some grace to be able to avoid landing on her.  “Come on, we’ll make a ‘Harlem Shake’ video for charity.  You can even pick the charity.”

Bruce leaned back further into the couch. “’Harlem Shake’ has a completely different implication when I’m involved.”

“Maybe the Other Guy wants to be in the video.”

“That’s not funny, Tony.”

“Trust me, it’s hilarious.  It would be so good for PR.  Just ask Pepper..PEP…PEPPER!” Tony began to holler, so Bruce slapped a hand over his mouth and pulled him against his chest. In the same movement, he snatched the scotch bottle, holding it out at arm’s length.

“No, Tony,” Bruce said calmly.  Tony mewled under his hand and lunged for the bottle. “Are you going to stop?”  Tony nodded.  “Are you going to keep drinking?” Tony paused for a moment and nodded again. Bruce slowly handed the bottle back.  Before letting Tony go, he leaned close to him.  “Good night, Tony,” he said, gentle and warm in his ear.

“Goodnight?” Tony replied, muffled under Bruce’s hand.

“Try to make sure Steve makes it to bed,” Bruce said as he pushed himself off the couch.  “JARVIS?”

“Yes, Doctor Banner?”

“You’re in charge.”

“As always, Doctor Banner.”

“No!” Tony called after him.  “Come back!  I’ll put on that weird Bollywood crap you like!”

Bruce fled to the elevator before his other drunken teammates noticed Tony’s pleas for him to come and dance.  The last thing he needed was for everyone else to start insisting that he join the impromptu superhero-stripper-rave.  He breathed a sigh of relief as the elevator doors closed; he hadn’t realized how loud the music had been until he was shut off from it.  The silence in the small space seemed intense after the previous assault on his eardrums, and his head buzzed. 

“Did you have a good time, Doctor Banner?” JARVIS asked.

Bruce smiled, though he wasn’t sure where to look for a camera.  “Yeah, I did.  Do you think they’ll be alright?”

“I will alert you if there is a situation requiring your assistance,” JARVIS assured.  “But I do not predict such a situation arising.  Tomorrow morning, however, may be another story.”

“Well, I better get some sleep so I’m prepared to deal with six of Earth’s mightiest hangovers.”

The elevator doors slid open on Bruce’s floor.  “That may be for the best,” JARVIS said.

Bruce paused with one hand on his apartment door.  “JARVIS?”

“Yes, Doctor Banner?”

“Did you really know what song Tony was thinking of?”

“Of course, Doctor Banner.  One of my earliest ventures in independent learning was using data trends and predictive algorithms to create playlists for Mr. Stark.”

“Data trends?  What kind of data?”

“I take into account the time of day, frequency and nature of stressful events, repetitive behaviors, and speech patterns among other data sources.”

“So, how long he’s been in the lab, what kind of things he’s blown up, how many times he’s hit the bottle, and his favorite curse word of the moment?”

“Precisely.”

Bruce shook his head as he entered his apartment.  “You are amazing, JARVIS.”

“One does have to possess quite some talent to survive living here, it seems,” JARVIS replied.  Bruce thought he heard some kindness in the voice behind the words, but it could just be because he was drunk.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the hilariously awesome Lego Avengers Harlem Shake video on YouTube...but Bruce just wouldn't dance. I couldn't get him to do it! So this might need another chapter if he can let his guard down a little.


End file.
